hermes

So, another month, another update.

Some of you may already know that I work for a venture startup that focuses on VoIP telephony services for small business. Although a great idea in theory, our CEO and major sharedholder refuses to invest in enough staff to make sure that the work that needs doing gets done properly. In fact, there is an excess of work largely because the same reguses to invest in automating and improving our internal admin, provisioning and billing processes, which are hence extremely prone to manual error. Although the company has been this way for a while it's really starting to get to me now. A day at the office is a total grind, and I'm always doing other people's work - instead of my own work as there nobody else to do it. My legendary patience is finally running out and I'm worried that one day I'm just going to snap - either at a colleague or a customer - either way that's not going to be good *sighs*

Money is also becoming increasingly tight as we soldier on inevitably towards Xmas. For the last 12 months I've been ebaying like a bastard to help ends meet but I'm now starting to run out of stuff I can get rid of. I've already been curtailing my usual habits and haven't bought any comics or DVDs for months now. Going out socially now is much more of a dillemma than it used to be, simply because I can't afford it. I'm also particularly concerned about the VAT going up in January - everything is already too expensive and this is just going to make it worse *sighs*

In a brighter note the London MCM Expo was cool. Again the usual stall selling pointless collectible tat, and the usual plethora of mindboggling costumes. I've been working the Expo for a few years now and this is the biggest one I've seen to date. Literally tens of thousands of people over the weekend. Not only was the hall full up but it was wall-to-wall with people outside in the Excel concourse too. Sadly for everyone one great costume there were 5-10 terrible ones. Not that I could tell you who most kids were trying to be because I'm not much of an anime fan. 13 year olds girls in nurses gear and lingerie though is just wrong. As are extremely overweight people in body stockings and bikinis. Unfortunately once something is seen it cannot be un-seen. On the plus side I got to see the British SF author Peter F Hamilton speak and said hello to him and got three books signed by him. I did keep an eye out for McK in the artists area but didn't see him.

Also cool was the holiday I took immediately after the Expo. Went up to Derby and hired some cottages with a bunch of friends. We hung out, got smashed and played a bunch of board games and tabletop RPGs. Ran a couple of games myself, one of which was a Marvel Superheroes game which mixed the British TV shows Countdown, Blankety Blank, It's Knockout and The Crystal Maze with the horror movie Saw. I also introduced people to the board game Tobago by Rio Grande which is a reverse elimination logic game about hunting for treasure on a tropical island (telling people 'it's like minesweeper') seems to help. The highlight of the weekend was our dress-up game on the Saturday night which was set in a casino - many people simply gambled all night while some of the rest of us put on the entertainment, the finale of which can be found on Youtube:

[YOUTUBE]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY59lsenYYE [/YOUTUBE]

Although I was thinking about doing NaNoWriMo this month, because I was on holiday I didn't get home until 9th Nov, which left starting it a bit late. I have sketched out the plot on my whiteboard and written a couple of thousand words but as I will struggle to devote 100% of my free time to it, I suspect it will take me well past the New Year before I get it finished. At least I've finally made a start though - I've certainly procrastinated enough about writing over the last couple of years...

Off later to see RED and Skyline - reviews to follow in due course!